Can I have 5 gold please? I need it to train my new level of skills. Woah, did you just put two hundred and twelve thousand gold into an open trade window?! Wait, where are you going? Wait!! Get back here! I’m not letting you get out of trade range! Oh my god, all this scrub has to do is click “trade” and I’ll be able to buy every single mount in the game!! I am not letting him out of range. I wonder why he’s wearing a monocle? Hey, he’s jumping down to the docks! I’d better keep up with him. Hmm, he’s taking an Elixir of Water Breathing? Strange. This guy must be a gold farmer or something. “/g ZOMG I’m gonna be rich guys!” Oh, you want to go for a swim? I don’t care where you go, I’m not closing this window or letting you get out of range. You can’t get away from me by swimming under a boat. Or into a cave. Or into that … what the H-E-double hockey-sticks? “You are dead”? How? This guy is in the same faction as me! Oh.

Professions are expensive! Getting a crafting skill to 450 involves geting all kinds of finnicky odd-ball mats from content that nobody ever runs these days, which typically means paying a whole lot for them. On top of it, all the stuff you make is pretty much valueless, and often fetches more at the vendor than it will in the auction house. What can you do to help turn these lemons into lemonade?

First off, it helps if you’re popular, smart, and patient. Popular people have friends who have tradeskills that might be able to help stem the losses, smart people have addons that can provide them with valuable information, and patient people are not at the mercy of low supply.

Popular

Well, if not popular, per se, at least friendly and willing to network. Seriously, the most expensive part of leveling a tradeskill is vendoring all the stuff you make to level. If you had the ability to lean on, say, and enchanter friend of yours, you could ask them to disenchant anything you make that is disenchantable. You’d be surprised how much these older enchanting mats go for. In fact, if you ever find yourself making something where the mats you are using are worth less than the enchanting mats you get out of it, keep using that recipe until it turns grey, no matter what your powerleveling guide says. If you are making money at any step along the way, milk it. Also, note down what you are doing for later, as you might be interested in doing this over the long run to help finance later, profitless steps toward tradeskill mastery.

In addition to a pocket enchanter, it can help to have friends who can provide other services for you:

* If you’re leveling something like blacksmithing or engineering which uses a lot of bars, being able to buy ore and have a friend smelt it for you will often reduce your costs. Ore is usually more plentiful and less expensive than bars. Usually.

* If you’re leveling inscription, it helps to have a friend with a high inscription skill, because Northrend herbs are often cheaper than whatever the herbs you can actually mill at your level. After milling, Northrend herb based Ink of the Sea can be traded for any of the low level common ink in Dalaran.

* If you’re leveling virtually any crafting skill, it helps to have a friend leveling a gathering skill. While I would recommend against picking gathering yourself, if you have a friend that doesn’t take good advice, you can probably work out an arrangement with them where you can buy all the low level stuff they farm.

Smart

Knowing the basics of the auction house and having a few addons can really make a difference between spending 7000g to powerlevel something like enchanting and making a profit. The skills involved in getting skill capped cheaply are, conveniently, the same ones you use to make money in the AH once you’re there. You need to know how to buy on the cheap, as well as how to sell efficiently. Still, whether you plan on doing a little auctioneering or not once you hit your goal, using the tools in those posts will help push you in the direction of profitability through lower costs or higher income from crafted goods.

Another tool you can use to great effect is Lilsparky’s Workshop and the Lilsparky fork of Skillet. When combined with Auctioneer, these will allow you to see the cost and market price for the recipes you have access to, allowing you to minimize losses and maximize profits. Using this data instead of following a leveling guide strictly can be a huge advantage. The mats you need to follow advice in a leveling guide are the same mats everyone reading that guide needs. If there’s a cheaper path, these addons can show it to you.

Patient

Slow and steady won’t win you any races, but if you can afford the luxury of waiting, you’ll be able to do just about everything cheaper. Make a list of the stuff you’ll probably need, watch prices every day to get an idea of what it’s worth, and make a point of picking it up whenever there’s a good price. A lot of time, there may not be enough supply of whatever you need at a fair price to get to the next step. Being able to wait instead of buying the overpriced stock will save you money.

Of course, the problem with this is that you might buy too much. Don’t let that phase you, though. You can always sell it back on the auction house. And if you wait long enough, you might find someone rushing through their skill that is willing to pay a premium.

If you’re not sure about the value of items, get in the habit of keeping Market Watcher up to date. You can install that addon, add everything you’ll need to its watch list, and look at a graph of the prices over time.

I have never spoken with Ghostcrawler, nor have we exchanged emails. In this, we are two lost souls reaching for each other across the vastness of the information superhighway, each seeking that other half to fill the emptiness within us. He by crafting and endlessly refining the perfect class in WoW, as well as nine other support classes to improve the hunter experience. Me by taking apart that creation to revel in the component pieces, to learn how they work and thus better understand him. We are platonic life partners who have yet to meet.

Because of this connection we share, this ephemeral bond, I am able to predict exactly how he’d answer if we did speak. If I happened to sit at a bar next to Ghostcrawler in the not-too-distant future and our eyes met over a glass of stout in a moment of magic, I think we can agree that not only would he consent to an interview, but that everything in the following transcript is exactly as he would say it. Except, possibly, for the words.

Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed Ghostcrawler. I know it’s not something you normally do.

My pleasure. You know … you’re really uncommonly good-looking.

Yeah, I get that a lot. So, let’s start with the basics. I know you play a lot of classes. Do you play a hunter?

Of course I do! I try to downplay it on the forums — it’s really important that I don’t show favoritism there, but I have two level 80 hunters. It’s just — well — it’s the greatest class, and that happened by design after all. I spend a lot of my time trying to sneak in more and more awesome hunter abilities into the game.

Really? Even for, say, BM?

Yeah, yeah, I get a lot of flak from the BM players. Keep in mind that BM was the over-the-top best spec for an entire expansion. All of BC, and then into the start of Wrath.

When you nerfed them into the analog age.

That call came from over my head. I have bosses too, you know. You don’t want to know what it would have been like if I wasn’t there to tone down the nerf. Heck, I even got some of them undone. But you gotta admit, even nerfed as they are, BM is still frickin’ awesome.

You know, I can’t really let an interview like this slip without asking about Cataclysm.

No problem. Shoot.

So focus. What’s up with that?

It’s something that we wanted to do for a long time. It just never really made thematic sense that hunters used mana, a resource mechanic that’s inherently synonymous with magic users. I think it makes hunter rotations a lot more interesting, too.

What about the complaint that it basically turns hunters into ranged rogues?

Oh god, every time I hear that I throw up a little in my soul.

Pffft! Sorry — don’t say things like that when I’m drinking!

It’s okay, it’ll come out. But seriously, we spend a lot of time thinking about class identity. Every class should have a distinct and separate identity as well as signature abilities, and we’re always very, very careful about messing with a class’ identity. In this case, I really don’t think we are.

The rogue identity is a fast-hitting, dual-wielding, melee physical DPS class that uses combo points to build up to big finishing moves. Their signature abilities include stealth, stuns and poisons.

The hunter identity is a ranged physical DPS class — the only one, by the way — and a pet class with the strongest and most versatile pets in the game. Their signature abilities include traps, kiting and incredible good-looks.

We are a good-looking bunch of guys.

And not just the guys. The hunter community has Zehera, Shandara, Lassirra — beauty and brains across the board!

But the point here is that focus is not a part of the rogue class identity, just like mana isn’t part of the hunter identity. Those are just the mechanics that control and attempt to put a limit on your attacks. If you really think that changing to focus makes you like a rogue, then you may as well also say that using mana makes you basically a warlock or a mage.

But when we switch to focus, we aren’t going to be able to spam nearly as many big shots in a row — so isn’t it effectively a nerf to our rotations?

In a word, no.

Right now if you’re BM in the end game, you keep up Serpent Sting and fire Aimed, Steady, Steady, Steady, Steady, Steady. At lower gear there’s probably an Arcane Shot in there, as well. But come Cataclysm, you won’t have your Aimed Shot and Arcane Shot on cooldowns, so you’ll actually use more specials in your rotation.

Now look at MM. You put up Serpent Sting, then fire Chimera, Aimed, Steady, Steady, Steady. In Cataclysm, you won’t necessarily always be able to fire Chimera and Aimed back to back, but in that same five-shot time frame, you’ll still get Chimera and Aimed Shot in there and still fire at least two Steady Shots. But if you have a good amount of haste, and if you take the talents to help with focus available to your tree, you can again get more good shots in the same time frame than you do now. I mean — it’s better!

I gotta say, it drives me crazy to see people who fixate on one part of the class preview, then ignore several other parts that affect the same mechanic and jump to silly conclusions and scream that the world is ending.

Well for the most part I like to think that the trolls genuinely mean well. They’re trying to convey a concern, but they just don’t have good communication skills. They talk in terms of absolutes and hyperbole because it’s the only way they know how to emphasize something they think is important.

No, I agree with you. But a lot of them are just raging asshats, too. For every two that mean well and just flunked junior high there’s another who’s simply a poster child for contraception.

No argument there. So I do have to admit that I was a bit miffed to see the focus cost associated with Disengage.

And you’re not the only one! To understand this, you have to understand the psychology of game development — which basically means understanding the psychology of gamers, or people in general.

One of the good things about changing hunters from mana to focus is that we can remove the cooldown from a lot of hunter spells. When we’re in the very early stages of testing like we are now, the first thing we want to try is to remove every cooldown that we think we might be able to get away with. We want to really explore the possibilities of the new resource mechanic. Even if we think it probably won’t work, we still want to give it a shot. After all, I’ve been surprised before with the ways players find to take advantage of mechanics, so let’s give them that shot.

But also history has taught us to be conservative when testing new things where players can see them. If we’re going to have a new ability, it generally behooves us to make it a bit more expensive or a little worse than we think it may need to be. It’s a lot easier to make it a bit cheaper or better in the next PTR patch than it is to do the reverse.

The first rule of making changes is that players hate to have anything taken away from them. They hate nerfs, real or perceived. And this isn’t specific to gamers; it’s just basic behavioral psychology.

A good example to highlight this is a test behavioral researchers did with chimpanzees. The researchers put a lever in the monkey’s cage, and whenever he’d –

Wait, monkey or chimpanzee?

What’s the difference?

A chimp is not a monkey; it’s in the ape family. These things are important to us hunters.

Oh, okay, chimpanzee. And remind me to check on that new monkey hunter pet too.

Anyway, so the chimp has a lever, and when it pulls the lever it gets a piece of lettuce. Chimps like lettuce; it’s tasty. So the chimp loves the experiment to death. Pull the lever, get more lettuce, eat the lettuce and pull the lever. Then after a while, the researchers change things up. One time, the chimp pulls the lever and gets a grape. Chimps love grapes; they’re way better than lettuce. But then the chimp pulls the lever again and it goes back to getting lettuce. Now the chimp gets pissed off and throws the lettuce at the researchers.

So just a minute ago the chimp was loving the lettuce, and now it’s insulted to be given that garbage. The lettuce didn’t get any worse or any less tasty, but the chimp’s perception of the value of the lettuce changed. MMO players are even more extreme — in an MMO if the players even hear that we considered giving grapes, they’ll suddenly be insulted with the lettuce that they loved until that point. So while we can’t avoid every nerf, we really try to avoid as many as we possibly can.

Sounds good. Any last words on focus before we move on?

Yes. Tell your readers that I promise them that they’ll still do competitive DPS. They’ll still be able to PvP. They’ll still be able to kite. If there’s a problem at any stage of the beta — the testing phase — I’ll correct it personally.

Will do! So, a lot of us hunters enjoy extreme soloing and pet tanking — even pet tanking raids, even ICC bosses. I’m wondering how we’ll do at this in Cataclysm. Especially with the PvP resilience change, we won’t be able to make our pets crit-immune anymore unless we get some other ability.

Unfortunately the powers that be don’t want hunters to be viable tanks. It’s fine if you can do some crazy stuff in extreme situations when overgeared, but once it’s just as easy to have a hunter tank a boss as an actual tank class, there’s a problem. We don’t want a non-tank class taking that spot away from a tank.

Well, if you made hunter pets able to tank, then we would be a tank class. I mean, it’s not like we have an overabundance of tanks, after all. At least not if the dungeon finder is any indication.

Would you want to pay the hybrid tax on your DPS then?

Oooooh, no. No thank you.

It’s interesting though, because back when we first started WoW, we had in mind that hunter pets would fill an off-tank role in dungeons and raids. The pets wouldn’t be tanking the boss, but would be tanking boss adds. So back then, the idea was that BM could fill solo and off-tank roles, MM was the main DPS spec and SV was originally envisioned to be a sort of melee hunter “fighting along side your pet” role, capable of ranged or melee. Obviously a lot has changed since then.

It sounds like our pets just aren’t going to be as good at tanking things in Cataclysm then?

I wouldn’t say that. Right now there’s no plans to boost pet crit reduction beyond the -4% they can get now. But I did manage to slip in a few things to help out, which we haven’t announced yet. For example, your Mend Pet will be able to crit, which is a huge boost in pet healing for extreme soloing. It’ll also make your gear choices for soloing a little more interesting, since that crit rating will affect your pet’s survival.

Also, we’re going to vastly improve the way pet stats work. In Cataclysm, all of your stats will transfer to your pet, in some ratio. So instead of just having your pet inherit your hit, stamina, AP and armor, your pet will get part of every stat the hunter gets. Most hunters will just care about the fact that their pet now scales with their haste and crit rating from gear, but on the tanking/soloing end, your pet will also be getting some of your dodge and parry rating.

This is a particularly big deal for BM, since one of the problems we saw with BM in Wrath was that pets didn’t scale linearly with hunter gear.

Okay, we’re already running really long, so I need to wrap this up. But I do have one more crazy question.

Shoot.

Why not, just once, have a “Player Patch” that introduces all the changes the players want. Start a thread on each of the class forums asking people about changes they want to see for their class, then let all the players vote for the changes they want to see most. Then take the top five changes for each class and implement them — maybe do it on a PTR patch so that you don’t break the game if people are really dumb. I’m not sure what would happen, but I think it’d be really, really interesting.

Well, there are two reasons that will never, ever happen. The first is the amount of resources it would take. I don’t think most people really understand how complicated certain changes are to implement. Sometimes it will be the most simple-seeming change that has something in the way the code works that makes it ridiculously difficult to code. There’s this idea that we can just have a couple guys spend a couple hours or days on something to make a tweak, and it’s just not the case.

I know that Blizzard makes tons of money, but they also spend tons of money to keep WoW going, and the cost for something like the Player Patch would be huge.

Sure, but you could just make a special mount — in fact, let the players vote on the mount, too — that you sell on the Blizzard store, and proceeds go to fund the Player Patch.

Fair enough, but then we get into reason number two. And this is one of the dirty secrets of game design that we really aren’t supposed to talk about:

Our job is not to make the game that you want. Our job is to make the game that you’ll play. And history has shown us that those are two very different games.

Well, thank you so much for doing the interview.

My pleasure, really. I … I could get lost just looking into your eyes.

Me too, buddy. Me too.

Come to Blizzcon. We’ll do another interview then.

It is well known that hideous undead monstrosities concocted by the deranged minions of the Lich King make for excellent target practice. Having rained death throughout the ICC Lower Spire and gathered up all of our rightful hunter loot, our next stop on the way to the Lich King is the Plagueworks. We are given more trash to shower us with Ashen Verdict rep, including the much sought-after Precious’s Ribbon (clearly hunter loot) before stepping into the chamber of the grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous undead of yore.

Join me after the cut as we take a look at the hunter tips for defeating the bosses of the Plagueworks. As always, we’re going to assume that you’re familiar with the boss strategies and will be looking at hunter-specific tips.

Trash Tip

We normally don’t talk about trash at all. We don’t optimize for trash and we don’t strategize for trash. We know that the trash is going to go down no matter what and if your raid is really having problems with trash, then you probably shouldn’t be doing that content.

That said, the Plagueworks has a few geist packs, and there are enough geists in the packs that you’ll hit the AOE damage cap, meaning your Volley is going to be doing far less damage per target than it could. A fun way to see big numbers on the geist packs is to drop the otherwise inferior Explosive Trap on them and then Volley (with MD up!). Each AOE is capped separately, so you can get your Explosive Trap ticks plus your Volley, giving you impressive AOE numbers. This isn’t really helping the raid any — you’d get the trash down anyway — but it’s always fun to see crazy high DPS.

Festergut

Our first stop is the closest we’re going to get to a Patchwerk fight in the Plagueworks. Festergut is darned near a straight up tank & spank, and while once again the melee have it easy, this is the fight where we can pretty much just sit still and pump out our massive sustained DPS.

In fact, Festergut is a DPS check boss. Your entire raid must be capable of very high sustained DPS to get him down before his five minute enrage timer. In both 10-man and 25-man the DPS requirements are pretty severe. The exact amount of DPS you have to do will vary depending on how many healers your raid is carrying. In 25-man your raid needs a total of 144,100 DPS to down Festergut in the nick of time. With two tanks at 3k DPS each (they get buffed) and only 5 healers, each DPSer would need to do 7,673 DPS. Any more healers and your DPS minimum goes up. Fortunately we are death dealers and are easily capable of handling this, and even carrying some of those sad elemental shamans.

• This fight is all about performance and skill. It is a test of your knowledge of your rotation, gear selection, and movement abilities.
• Remember to stay spread out. Make sure you are over 8 yards from anyone else.
• If you are MM, burn your cooldowns on engage. You should be able to take advantage of four Rapid Fires during this fight.
• When you have to move to the spores to get inoculated, remember to shoot & scoot or use Disengage to cover the ground. You should not lose a single shot to this movement — this is where you need to use those movement skills.
• The only thing that should cause you to lose shots on Festergut is getting hit with Vile Gas. The dirty melee sold their souls to the ICC developers and once again have easy mode and don’t get hit with it, so they’ll generally own the meters here.
• There are some reports that Deterrence will protect you from Pungent Blight. I haven’t tried this because I don’t want to waste any DPS time, but this could be a way to help if you miss an inoculation (which you would never do — right?).

Rotface

If Festergut is the Patchwerk of ICC, then Rotface is the Grobbulus. I hate Rotface with a burning rage that is nearly as great as my hatred for elves. This fight is all about ooze management and good burst DPS at the last 20% when the oozes are going crazy.

• Avoid getting slime sprayed. One way to gauge your performance on this fight is to see how much Slime Spray damage you took. You want that number to be zero.
• Be aware of where the kiter is at all times. When you get the Mutated Infection you don’t want to waste any time trying to figure out where your kiter is.
• When you get Mutating Infection, Disengage toward the kiter. Your goal here is to get rid of your ooze as quickly as possible and return to the center.
• Remember to continue shooting Rotface while you’re dealing with your infection and ooze.
• Be ready to MD an ooze to the kiter at a moment’s notice. If someone dies with the Mutating Infection the little ooze will still spawn and head straight to the healers. It’s our job to get them back to the kiter.
• During the ooze explosion, continue to DPS while you run away. Remember to pause a half second to let your auto-shots fire while you’re running.
• Aspect of the Wild is not be needed for this fight. Currently MM hunters take a massive hit for using this, and it just isn’t necessary.

Now, some groups may actually have their hunter kite the Big Ooze. We are better than any tank at generating threat on our kiting targets, and we can continue to DPS Rotface while we’re kiting. Here are some tips if you’re going to be kiting the Big Ooze:

• Do not ever let it get too close to you. The Big Ooze is perfectly capable of one-shotting you.
• Do not get too far away. Since you’re going in circles, the farther you get the more “corners” the Big Ooze can cut, and it can and will cut through the center of the room, hitting the raid with its aura.
• You will have to kite through the ooze flooded portions of the room at times. Do not try to switch directions. Your healers can deal with it.
• If you get caught in multiple floods in a row and the big ooze is getting close, jump-Disengage to buy some range.
• Always keep an eye on the center for loose small oozes. One of our strengths is our ability to pull these out of the center without having to adjust our kiting.
• Put Serpent Sting on Rotface. Create a macro for your Chimera Shot so that it automatically shoots at Rotface, and lets you keep your ooze targeted. This will allow you to always have Serpent Sting on the boss, and your most damaging shot will always fire at him.
• Use all other shots on your ooze. Healers can spike a lot of threat on the ooze, and you want to maintain a big, big threat lead. Losing your ooze due to DPSing the boss more is not worth it. Trust me on this one, I did it once.
• During the ooze explosion and anytime there is no Big Ooze out, you should be DPSing the boss all out, from range.
• When I was kiting (in 10-man) I was able to do 6k DPS with 74% of my damage done on Rotface. This is a huge DPS gain for the raid versus having a tank do the kiting — assuming that the tank can switch to offspec and do good DPS.

Professor Putricide

Professor P is not the doddering, endearing, and helpful kind of professor you so often see in movies. He’s the other kind. This three phase fight is a test of your situational awareness. It’s all about dodging the everything and switching targets without losing too many shots.

• When possible, try to be at long range. In particular this gives you more time to dodge Malleable Goo in phases 2 and 3.
• Obviously you should stack on the target of the green ooze in phases 1 and 2.
• The fight has a lot of movement, but most of it is predictable. Always be planning where you need to be next, and be prepared to shoot & scoot your way over.
• When switching between the left and right sides of the room, Disengage is your friend. Cover the bulk of the distance swiftly and without losing shots.
• Remember to switch to DPS down oozes instantly.
• How fast your raid is capable of downing the oozes will determine your shot cycle on them — if your raid is killing the oozes fast you won’t want to bother with Hunter’s Mark, Serpent Sting, or your pet. If your ooze DPS is light, you’ll want to include your Serpent Sting and pet, though Hunter’s Mark is probably still not worth it.
• Keep Serpent Sting on Professor P at all times.
• In phase 3 while the professor is being kited, plan your movement to maximize your DPS. If you’re following behind him, scoot up a bit in between every shot, even when you don’t need to. That way when you get to the Steady Shot part of your cycle, you can afford to sit there and fire them all off.

Your measure of your performance on this fight is largely the amount of damage you do to the oozes and the amount of avoidable damage you take. You should not take Malleable Goo damage at all and little slime pool damage. The best path to victory here is to make life as easy as possible on your healers, and that means avoiding the avoidable damage and killing the oozes fast.

With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown.

We’re continuing our looter’s guide to the Icecrown Citadel. This week we’re delving into the Crimson Halls. This is the vampire wing of the citadel and they’re kicking it up in style. There are the pretty-boy vampires complete with glitter as well as the vampire vixen leading them. If only Buffy Summers were in my guild, this place would be cake. However, she’d probably end up in love with one of the blood princes and then they’d become good guys for a while which makes us start to care about them only to find out that it was all an elaborate ploy to trick the slayer into a ritual to turn the high school into a demonic portal to hell. Wait, I think I’ve actually seen that one.

Kite the orb of fire, kill the bomb, and let the hunter tank the shadow guy. Wait, didn’t we kill some of these guys already? And did he just use glitter on me? Ack! They’re Twilight vampires! Let’s stake them and see what they bought with their movie deal money.

• Holy
  • Heartsick Mender’s Cape – 10 man – Cloak upgrade time. We’ve got a red socket and it bumps up our haste as well as mp5.
  • Cerise Coiled Ring – 10 man – This ring has a bit more intellect than stamina, which is always good in my opinion. It has a red gem slot and has crit and haste with the lion’s share of the itemization going to crit.
  • Mail of Crimson Coins – 25 man – If you don’t have a resto/elemental shaman in your raid, you could probably swipe this chest piece. It has three gem sockets (red, yellow, and blue)with the equip stats as haste and mana per five. It actually has quite a bit of mp5 if you’re looking for that.
  • Crypt Keeper’s Bracers – 25 man – These are a pair of crit and haste bracers. They’ve also got a yellow gem slot you could toss an intellect gem into.
  • Incarnadine Band of Mending – 25 man – This ring is awaiting a blue gem of your choice (or a completely different gem if you’re so inclined). Its other stats are crit and mp5 with the itemization lean towards mp5.
• Protection
  • Spaulders of the Blood Princes – 10 man – These plate shoulders have a significant amount of health available to them. It’s leaning very very heavily towards stamina over strength at almost two to one ratio. It also has two blue gem sockets on them which you could load up with stamina gems. Other things which aren’t stamina include a bunch of defense rating, some parry, and some hit. However, you get these purely for the health pool bump. Don’t forget to go grab your shoulder enchants from those Hodir boys.
  • Royal Crimson Cloak – 25 man – This is a pretty universal tanking cloak. It has a bunch of stamina, defense and dodge rating in equal parts as well as a little bit of hit. It also has a yellow gem slot as well.
  • Taldaram’s Plated Fists – 25 man – These gauntlets aren’t as heavily stacked towards stamina as other items we’ve been looking at, but stamina is still at an advantage. There are two gem slots colored in red and blue. The defense rating and parry rating seem to be the main stats on here, but it also has a decent amount of dodge rating as well to help you get out of that Icecrown radiance funk.
• Retribution
  • Battle-Maiden’s Legguards – 10 man – This set of legs has three gem slots in them (two red and one yellow). It’s got a lot of haste on it as well as a large chunk of expertise. With the amount of strength you can shove into three gem slots, I’m not complaining.
  • Thrice Fanged Signet – 10 man – This crit and haste ring is fairly decent for ten man. You’ve also got a red gem slot in it for an additional Bold Cardinal Ruby.
  • Landsoul’s Horned Greathelm – 25 man – It’s a pretty simple helm, but includes large chunks of both crit and hit. It has a meta slot as well as an additional yellow gem socket.
  • Cryptmaker – 25 man – While not Bryntoll or Shadowmourne, it is a pretty decent two-handed mace. It’s nice and slow giving you a bit more power in your swings as well as having some hit rating to make sure you actually connect (but you’re already hit capped, right?). The armor penetration isn’t all that important unless you’re getting a lot of procs out of your tier 10 set bonus, but can be handy in that case.

Blood-Queen Lana’thel

Oh look, another tank swapping boss. However, you do get to bite people which can lead to all sorts of bad jokes. Just beware the other plate wearers as all of that metal is bad for your teeth.

• Holy
  • Cowl of Malefic Repose – 10 man – This is a clothie head piece, so you’ll probably have some competition if you decide to nab it. Its main stat is crit, but it also has a nice chunk of haste on it. It has a meta slot as well as a blue slot when it comes to gems.
  • Chestguard of Siphoned Elements – 10 man – Another piece of shaman gear (shhh, don’t tell them). The chest piece focuses on haste, but has mp5 as a backup stat. The three gem slots in it are two reds and a yellow which can easily be filled with whatever you’d like.
  • Tightening Waistband – 10 man – This plate belt has a red and a blue gem socket along it before you add your Eternal Belt Buckle. It’s focus is towards haste, but it also has some mp5 on it.
  • Blood Queen’s Crimson Choker – 25 man – This spell necklace drops from the twenty-five man version. It’s got a yellow gem socket in the middle and has a fair amount of both critical strike rating as well as a similar amount of haste in it.
  • Bauble of True Blood – 25 man – Let’s just start out by saying that there are much better options. Sure, the mp5 is nice and the heal at first glance might be okay, but a free 7k heal every 2 minutes isn’t that big of a deal. As a paladin, we can always Lay on Hands in a pinch or get a proc for an instant cast. The only real benefit is that as a trinket, the heal would be off of the global cooldown and instant cast. However, as I said earlier, for PvE, there are much better options.
• Protection
  • Veincrusher Gauntlets – 10 man – As with most of the protection gear in Icecrown, these lean heavily towards stamina in its primary stats. It also has both a red and a blue gem slot that you could fill with additional stamina or even some avoidance or threat gems. The equip stats stair step down a bit from each other with defense rating being in the lead followed by expertise and then dodge.
  • Icecrown Glacial Wall – 25 man – This shield keeps with the skull motif we’ve been seeing a lot lately. It honestly looks a bit like Arthas’ cereal cabinet door that you pried off while skulking through his kitchen. The block rating on it isn’t that high, but it also has some parry rating to go along with it. However, it’s almost never a bad time to upgrade a shield to the next tier just for the large chunk of additional armor it brings.
• Retribution
  • Collar of Haughty Disdain – 10 man – This plate dps necklace has a fair amount of both crit and haste. It’s got a single yellow gem slot in it waiting to be socketed with something.
  • Throatrender Handguards – 10 man – These plate gloves are pretty decent, but I wouldn’t necessarily break my set bonus for them. They’ve got a yellow and a red gem socket in them. As far as equip stats go, they’re sporting a large amount of hit as well as a nice amount of haste on the side.
  • Lana’thel’s Chain of Flagellation – 25 man – This necklace is pretty close to the best in slot one for normal modes. They’re identical when it comes to strength and stamina, but differ on the rest. The single socket on this one is for a yellow gem and it has expertise and armor penetration on it for its equip stats. This might be something worth passing on if you’re saving up your DKP.
• All Paladins
  • Conqueror’s Mark of Sanctification – 25 man and heroic 10 man – As with the end of each of the major wings in the citadel, the final boss drops a generic armor token. These can be traded in (along with your current version of the tier ten gear) to upgrade its item level a bit. Unfortunately, these do not drop in the normal version of 10 man, but do in every other difficulty.

Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. “So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is–other people” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

While I try not to read Arcane Brilliance if I can help it, I did notice that the one on January 16th had a lot of comments and an intriguing title. While I didn’t expect Mr. Pants to actually start flaming mages I did hold out some hope for all those comments. Anyway, the piece inspired me to write a similar article. Not so much because there are a lot of warlocks that need improvement but rather they need a place to point others, so they may learn how to play with a lock.

So here’s a short list of things I see in groups and raids that could be improved and make the whole experience a lot smoother.

Resource management

As locks we are masters of managing our health and mana. While we have limited ability to fill up the green one, this should be no issue when we have a healer around. The problem is that so often the healer doesn’t realize that his healing you after Life Tap is a direct link to his being able to get his gear (…emblems or whatever). You are there to kill the stuff for him, he is there to let you do that faster and with less dying. It gets so bad that sometimes we have to actually ask the healer to heal us! This sorry state of affairs has gone on so long that there are even locks that extol the virtues of self healing abilities and Dark Pact simply because they make it easier on the healer.

Healers, please listen. We locks want to kill all the nasty things between you and the goal, be they bosses, trash or that creepy looking spider that startled you earlier on. We will happily do this and never shirk on the dealing of the damage. Please remember us in your healing and think about how we want to use the health bar for our mana. We get through mana so much faster than you (seriously locks, if you have never played a healer you wouldn’t believe how long they can go without drinking and they have no Life tap at all!), and while you regenerate it passively all the time we have to tap. Throw us a HoT after every pull and we’ll just tap for the duration, or be ready to throw a heal before each pull as we tap between fights.

After all that though, there are some things that us locks can do to make things easier on our more healing-shy healers.

• On long fights (bosses) tap little and often, this plays well with GaLT anyway but also means that you will probably either heal yourself up or pick up incidental heals from the likes of PoM, CoH, CH etc.
• Don’t tap away half your life just before the next trash pull. Make sure you have what you need but if you go into the fight with a big deficit then you not only distract the healer from the tank (which may be nasty) but also force that healer into a big(ish) heal at a time when the tank may not have much threat on all the mobs (especially any ranged mobs).
• If you just want to proc GoLT then use a rank one Life Tap.
• Make sure you can see HoTs when they are on you, if you notice one then you can consider using it to top up your mana as well as your health.
• If you use addons such as PitBull you can set this to show any heals incoming. If it is going to have some overhealing to it then you might want to get a quick Life Tap in before it lands. The healer is only going to be frustrated by the lock that taps just after they topped them off.

Pet inclusion

Pets are part of the team. Pretty much every pet or minion has some synergy with their master and as such the better one performs, the better both perform. When a minion or pet dies a significant portion of what that character has invested in, has been removed from the fight. Healers, for the love of God, have pets on your healing bars and show them a modicum of care. I’m not suggesting that any pet gets heals in favour of a player (well, maybe a mage) and especially the tank, but to disregard them completely is crazy. Minions these days are pretty damn hard to kill (probably because Blizz knows they are important and can’t persuade healers to care) but that doesn’t mean they are invulnerable. On the other hand, they are very easy to heal, with all that mitigation something as simple as a disc bubble lasts them for ages and a small heal will normally fill up any health bar.

And buffs. Dear lord how many times have I entered an instance after a wipe and every buffing class rattles through their buffs while I summon my minion. Yes it is good to get back into the fight faster but you wouldn’t give the mage a lower rank spell than everyone else just because it saved you a few seconds, would you? That’s what you do to pet classes by not buffing their pets. Demonology locks make great use of minion buffs with talents like Demonic Knowledge. So to all buffing classes, don’t forget the pets.

Again, there are things we locks can do to help here:

• If you have the chance to summon your pet before you get to the place where buffs are cast then do so. Even the most fastidious pet-buffer can easily forget how many pets there should be before he can start. No good in TotC, but most other places you can summon as soon as you step through the instance portal then move on for buffs.
• Tell your imp to stand away from you (and anyone else) if the fight includes targeted AoE attacks (such as Northrend Beasts and Professor Putricide) so they don’t end up standing in nasty stuff for ages. Just not so far from healers that they can’t reach them.
• Switch off Phase Shift. Seriously, it was standard form in TBC to have your imp act as a portable and immune mana-battery but these days he is (or should be) actively taking a part in combat. Having Phase Shift on auto-cast is just a waste of his mana and means he is safe when he is out of combat and is completely impervious to getting buffs. Switch it off.

Target selection

Ok, this is a tough one for the PUGs that many of us are doing these days but it is one of the easiest ways to reduce the “WTF factor”. Let the tank mark up, if that means he has to become the group leader then so be it. Tanks, mark the target you want us to make dead first. Tanks will often bemoan the difficulty of AoE tanking and blame the AoEing DPS for pulling aggro. This is all very well if you want the DPS to focus one target but if you don’t tell them this, then you’ll likely get the DPS doing whatever delivers the most damage per second, that’s what they are there for. Slap a skull on any mob and most DPS will be itching to see how fast they can kill it, affording you a little time to throw in some AoE moves on the rest. Threat generation in Wrath is crazy and while AoE threat-gen may feel weak in comparison these abilities are tuned to be effective enough for burst damage classes to wail on even with every buff n the game.

What can we locks do to help here?

• If the leader marks something to die then kill it first. The tank should be generating their threat hard and fast on that target so go for it. If you are asked to nuke skull then don’t AoE simply because there are more than two mobs within 20 yards of each other.
• Get a feel for your tank’s abilities. While it’s the tank’s fault if they’re about as threatening as a sock puppet it’s still the DPSers fault if they pull aggro. Use a threat meter and watch it. If you are constantly well behind the tank then you know you can open up with every can of whoop-ass in the larder.
• Know how to ramp up damage. This might be by starting with slow DoTs (CoA for example) or even waiting a little while. If your tank needs time to generate threat then give it to them; it’s frustrating but better than paying repair costs.
• Be aware of threat ranges. In the Blood Pact about voidwalkers we talked about threat mechanics; remember that you can have more threat before taking aggro if you stay at range.
• Know when you have aggro. It may sound silly but many people don’t even know if they pull aggro. Addons like PitBull again make this very easy with the banzai module but there are many, many ways to know and this is something not to be ignorant of.
• Run towards the tank. If you do get aggro, then running from the fight and leading the mob away from your tank like some Benny Hill sketch will probably result in the mob chasing you till he catches you and kills you. if you run towards the tank then they have a better chance of getting it off you.
• Shatter. I know it uses a shard and has a cooldown but don’t be that guy that never uses his cooldowns in case one day he needs them. If you rise high on threat then dump it if you want to carry on blasting. If you get aggro then get rid of it.
• Don’t always just assist the tank. This is kinda opposed to what Pants said but he made the assumption that the tank was not swapping targets much or at all. It is true that what the tank is looking at as he starts the fight is probably what he wants dead first, this isn’t sure enough to work with. Having the focus frame and seeing their target is good but a decent tank will be tabbing away and making sure none of the mobs he is controlling runs off and splats their healer (yes, they care more about the healer than you). Get used to knowing which mob is next to die (assuming you aren’t AoEing) and work on that. Often it’s better to reduce the enemies number one at a time than keeping them all alive until the end, even if that makes the fight shorter. A mob on half health hurts just as much as one on full health (normally).

So this week I wanted to introduce a term called actions per minute and what it means for healers. In the end, its all about being efficient. Are you a healer who waits around for stuff to happen or do you make stuff happen?

The origin of actions per minute started with real time strategy games like Warcraft 3. At the time, players used it as a way to measure their skills. One’s ability to do as many things as possible garnered respect from their peers (while players like myself would right click spam the map in an effort to artificially inflate actions per minute because I was naturally bad at it). Having a high APM count usually means that the player knows what to do and how to react in a given situation. It also means that they have the dexterity to pull it off.

So when I’m talking about actions per minute, I’m not necessarily referring to healing per second (HPS). HPS is your ability to jam as much healing per second. For example, a discipline priest would be able to score a high HPS by dropping shields all over the place on a fight with high AoE damage (Val’kyr Twins from Trial of the Crusader comes to mind). Now I don’t play a holy paladin very often, but I imagine all they would do to score as high as possible is to beacon a player and smash Holy Light as much as possible.

Keep in mind that the amount of spells and abilities you can do is internally limited by something called the global cooldown.

Why is this important for healers?

In any given fight, the raid has a time window to get the boss down before they wipe due to some enrage mechanic or timer.

In an encounter like Rotface, where I need to avoid Slime Spray, I need to focus on moving to avoid that threat. At the same time, I know some of the players around me may get hit or I may get hit once or twice when avoiding it. I could simply run through and then heal. Or I can Renew myself or cast Holy Nova until I don’t have to move anymore ensuring everyone in my group gets some heals. By covering my group and myself on the fly, I don’t have to worry about healing us when I get to a safe spot. I can then look for new players to heal.

Get it?

Instead of moving then healing the group, I moved while healing the group.

That’s a really simple example though.

Once you get to a fight like Professor Putricide you’ll recognize that there are all sorts of things going on at once. Some of the actions taken can’t exactly be measured. For example, once we get to phase 2, I’m still firing out shields as a discipline priest. I’m mostly targeting the players that are in melee range just in case they get blasted by those nasty orange vials. At the same time, one eye is intently focused on any oozes that spawn and I’m ready to run away or start chasing after targeted players. Just because your character is limited by global cooldowns doesn’t mean that you cannot think ahead to your next actions. Try

What if there isn’t anything to do?

I’m sure you can find something to do. Pre-cast some spells or pre-heal. You’re telling me that you’re in an encounter where no one is taking damage right then and there? In most cases, you’ll see a timer or an emote that indicates when some attack is going to occur. If you know when a particularly hard hitting ability is about to strike, you can start taking steps. Don’t react to the damage that’s about to come in. Take steps and face it head on. Let’s use the Stinky or Precious example this time. They’re the guard dogs in the Plagueworks with a Decimate ability which cuts into raid health by 95% or so. Anyway, your raid has engaged them and its been a while since his last Decimate.

At this point, a cautious holy priest would start casting Renew on the healers and other soft targets (cloth wearing casters or players with low health pools) in your group. Even though the first few ticks of the HoT might go to waste due to overhealing, when the Decimate does go off, all of the Renews you have cast will start becoming active and healing players up. So as your group starts getting gradually healed up, you know that in a few seconds they will not be on the brink of dying. Since you won’t have to worry about them, this allows you to cast Prayer of Healing on a different group that hasn’t been affected by your Renews.

Never stop trying to get better as a raid healer. A lot of the improvements that can be made on an individual level are often intangible qualities. I know that its hard since healers are ultimately focused on keeping players alive. This leads to tunnel vision and it affects me too. Rotface gives me some serious tunnel vision at times. I’ve been nailed by 13 Slime Sprays the first time but I’m gradually cutting that number lower and lower as we work on him.

If you really want to stress yourself out, try eating dinner and healing on a progression fight. Here’s a tip: Don’t eat rice. Getting rice grains out of the keyboard is not fun.a

Disappointed with the content in Wrath of the Lich King, Cygnus of <Tetractys of the Decad> on Drenden has decided to be first in line to greet Deathwing at Grim Batol. He sent in the following poem/rant/Unabomber-esque screed about tanking in WotLK:

• Cygnus is waiting. Cygnus is a protection warrior that, like many heroes, was promised glory in the frozen north. Cygnus arrived in the freezing wastes to find no glory, but only that all the crowd control is now solely his job. Cygnus looked up to a sky with no sun, only to see a drake he had to ride, depriving him from his sword. Cygnus loved to learn new abilities during his training, and felt miserable when he was ordered to ride and charge with a lance. Cygnus hates being cold. Cygnus has had it with the Lich King. Cygnus is in Wetlands until the voices in his head stop calling for a “taunt”. Cygnus is now at the doors of Grim Batol, where the sun shines, and a new promise of glory will be made. Cygnus is waiting.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

Not only are we taking applications for a resto/moonkin druid columnist, a holy paladin columnist, a lore columnist and an addon columinst, but now we’d like to throw the shaman column into the mix. After over two years of throwing down shaman advice like totems at an Onyxia raid, Matt Rossi is moving on to other writing duties on the site (and continuing with the warrior column.) And, as with the other hybrid class columns, we are going to take this opportunity to split the column into two weekly installments to focus on specific talent trees.

Our very own Michael Sacco, who has recently been promoted to Editor here as well as taking over the reins of the WoW Insider Show podcast, will be writing a weekly elemental shaman installment of Totem Talk. That leaves us with the need for an restoration/enhancement shaman columnist, with a particularly strong background in the healing aspect. If that’s you and you want to get paid to write about your favorite class, follow the directions listed on our application page. You have until end of day Friday, January 15th to apply.

While venturing into Icecrown Citadel, death knight Joanus of <Inner Circle> on Kilrogg-EU discovered this disturbing message spelled out on the ground with well-placed fish feasts. “The biggest questions to be asked here are who put this there? Why?” asked Joanus. “Is this a message from Jaina to Arthas? What does the Lich King think of this? How long has it been there? I guess the only way to find out is to head to the top of the Citadel and ask him personally.” Yeah, good luck with that.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.